Legacy of Kain: Rhetoric
by Orochimartyr
Summary: Jazz writes all the hylden lore. A post-Defiance continuation starring: Elder Kain trying to learn responsibility, Vorador whom has no idea what is happening & just wants to go home, Ariel fulfilling her sassy, sassy potential, and Raziel: exorcised and kind of mad about it. And a ton of plot npcs! and Hylden! Its a lot.
1. A Prelude

A Prelude

To think whatever inhabitable space lie within the Soul Reaver may have allowed its stolen spirit to have even slight respite was a kind and hopeful thought. That hope was empty.

Within the Reaver, if that is indeed where it was, there was nothing. As much as one could describe it was an abyssal void. It was black not for lack of color but rather what felt like a coalescence of everything that was. Yet at the same time it was desolately empty. Raziel was the only consciousness to inhabit the accursed blade. Well. Yes technically he always was and will be. Some part of him was far more primal, far less tolerant of hunger. For having no corporeal form hunger seemed to be the only constant feeling he perceived.

Or perhaps it just seemed that way. Any preconceived notions of time had not applied here. Not that time had come to mean much before he gave himself up to the sword. In the Reaver he had no way to measure time when he faded in and out of conscious awareness. That was until he felt something, or someone, familiar.

Every now and again Raziel could sense the presence of passing spirits. The stronger the spirit the more he was aware. Given his nature they would quickly make themselves scarce or be devoured. This lent no solace to his bleak loneliness. This spirit, however, this person he knew.

 _Ariel?_

Her presence grew stronger and then, most mercifully, he heard her speak.

"And who is that?" Although filled with suspicion Raziel may possibly never have been so happy to hear anything in his existence. For a moment he didn't even register her voice as real as he remained sightless. No. He had definitely heard her and somehow she had heard him. He could only feel an ongoing surprise while she spoke again.

"Not you-… I am bound if-… do recall." Her enigmatic voice took on a hostile tone with which he was unfortunately familiar. It faded in at out as she seemed to be addressing someone else. The inflection in that last fragment was a level of malice undoubtedly reserved for Kain. As the vampire Kain was the one wielding the Soul Reaver, this was not surprising. Ariel was still bound at the Pillars? That was surprising. The last he had encountered her she gave up existing to purify the Wraith Reaver. To purify him.

A moment later (a moment perhaps) Raziel flared to action like a fire stoked to life. His surprise increased exponentially as all of his energy seemed to catch on something like claws on a wire and then- It gave. Raziel hadn't remained aware immediately afterwards undoubtedly having exhausted all the energy he didn't even know was there.

After that point Ariel began speaking to him with regularity. At first she was incredibly wary, apparently remembering him from a previous less than charming encounter. Did that mean she could see him? He hadn't really the awareness for a lot of critical thinking in the void. He was only aware he was grateful beyond measure to have someone to talk to. More-so as her hostility subsided. She would keep any questions short as was his limited ability to answer them, she kept him abreast of Kain's doings, and, most appreciated, she spoke to him as if he were a person.


	2. Exorcism

Chapter One:  
Exorcism

The hylden knew something as happening. They had no way of knowing what it was but the sense of unease in the city had them on edge. It was no surprise then when word came through that outlying vampires were mobilizing. Kain was annoyed more than anything to have called attention to himself. Not that a few hylden were much of a worry to him or the elder vampire he had so suddenly wrested from the shadows of Meridian.

They had let the patrol come. It seemed an unusual number of guards to send into long abandoned ruins on hearsay. As a younger vampire, a fledgling these hylden were no doubt familiar with, Kain would not have thought twice about such a thing. They sent an armed squad and a unit of sorcerers the latter of which he had not seen before. Older now as he was he did not like it.

Most of the attackers focused on him. The hylden sorcerers seemed to have split their attentions between fending off Vorador and setting up some kind of ritual. He liked that even less.

Kain made short work of his assailants. The Reaver was positively alive in the midst of such a frenzy. When nothing more stood against him he turned his attention to the portentous ritual. There was indefinite intent in the fervor with which the hylden were chattering to one another that solidified Kain's concern. He strode across the dark and ruined courtyard with a much more focused intent.

The half-circle of magic users gave furtive shouts to one among them. A single hylden stepped away from the rest. It seemed to take a spit second of consideration before charging headlong at the oncoming vampire. With a slightly puzzled look across his face Kain did little more than swing the Reaver up and into the chest of this apparently desperate thing. The violence of the strike halted its forward momentum completely. Its dark robes snapped and fluttered around it. The creature brought its emaciated hands up and grasped the blade of the Reaver.

Blood soaked into the steel on contact. An unearthly howling surrounded it, a harmony to the hylden's dying rasp. And yet. The hylden grinned. All of its ever-present teeth flashed from its drawn face.

"What have you done-" Kain began, prying the creature from the sacred blade with his foot.

Suddenly a bright blinding light tore through the dilapidated court. The rune in the midst of the hylden flashed and crackled with energy. The Reaver's ominous howling became louder and louder but no longer emanated from the sword itself. Kain glanced down at the skull adorning the Reaver's hilt. His breath caught in his throat finding the usually blazing sockets unsettlingly black.

His gaze shot back up to the sorcerers. The glowing hastily scratched rune illuminated bones scattered in its center. The otherworldly screaming filled the ruins. A sudden wind whipped up ferociously causing Kain to lift an arm and shield his eyes. Even so he could see the bones lift from the ground. In a macabre display sinew began to sprout and twine around the offerings.

As an entire humanoid shape began to form the hylden sorcerers seemed to falter in their channeling. The shape took on a familiar shade of blue. A tortured skeletal form continued to emit an ethereal wailing punctuated by cries of frustration. Searing white light guttered wildly from its eyes and exposed throat. Tridactyl claws scraped at the ancient stone beneath them.

Kain made to step forward but was struck by another blast of wind. To his surprise the regeneration did not stop. Much to everyone's surprise, it seemed. The glowing rune pulsed as the summoned wraith threw its head up to glare at the hylden in front of it. The sorcerer's cohorts had no time to panic before they simultaneously collapsed to the ground dead. A sickly light burst forth from every orifice of the remaining hylden's skull and it too fell. The skeletal creature continued to regenerate at an accelerated pace. With moments a fully fleshed vampire form lay prone on the ground, curled in on himself in agony.

Kain stood in stunned silence for several seconds watching smoke rise from the now inert sigil.

"What in the nine hells was **that**?"

The vampire Vorador had been standing on the other side of the ritual. He dropped the dead hylden in his grasp with an unceremonious thud before stepping into the smoldering circle. He gingerly lifted an arm of the prone vampire with a taloned foot.

"From whence was this piteous thing summoned?" Vorador asked, taking a step back. Kain had come forward, his jaw set in contemplation and no small degree of anger. He held the Reaver out to the elder vampire, whom took it resentfully, and plucked the new arrival from the ground. There was no breath. No heartbeat. The body was unsettlingly cold and still considering the prefacing spectacle.

Kain affixed Vorador with a sidelong glance. There was a brief but heavy pause before he spoke with stern countenance.

"The SoulReaver. They exorcized the blade."


	3. A Line of Questioning

Chapter Two:  
A Line of Questioning

Sensation returned to him as cold embers blooming along his nerves. Muscles he'd forgotten how to use shuddered into motion with glacial reluctance. He instinctively took a breath out of habit. He heard dust scatter across stone. There was a shift behind him.

Raziel shot up into a sitting position at the behest of centuries of paranoia. The sudden motion lit up his entire body on some level he didn't quite grasp at the moment. His arm caught beneath him. He winced. Not his arm. He looked down at both of his hands. The flesh and keratin returned to them… He sat this way for what felt like forever. He couldn't. He just could not summon the focus or the energy to acknowledge having pinned a wing, his wing, beneath himself.

His attention instead snapped upwards. Lounging against a weathered stone wall not a meter away as casual as ever was the ancient vampire Vorador. His deep forest green pallor lent to the darkness of the corner in which he stood. His obsequious burgundy clothing did all it could to combat that. His arms folded across his chest, he looked indescribably tired but also extremely formidable.

"Assuming there is only one prophesied cerulean corpse in Nosgoth what **exactly** are you that you keep oozing out of crevices when you are not needed?" Vorador barked into the empty space. The pale, rather panicked looking figure on the floor jumped, startled at the sound. Still in the midst of collecting his senses Raziel hardly registered the question even as he met Vorador's accusatory gaze. The elder's piercing yellow eyes held millennia of judgement.

Vorador snapped his fingers upon receiving no reply. "I have not lived so long to be left in the dark." He proclaimed.

Raziel had been gazing without focus, sifting through everything in his head, trying to take cognitive inventory. There was so much. Such a tangled web of surreal events to pick through. Vorador's second exclamation reached through his thoughts. The indignation rose up before he even registered it.

" _I do apologize; it must be frustrating to not receive answers._ "

Raziel's voice was heard with such venom behind it Vorador was momentarily taken aback. An aggressive scowl then came across the elder's weathered face. His fangs showed no such age as they emerged from his drawn lips. He seemed to grow taller as he stepped away from the now cloying walls. As he closed the distance between them Raziel's expression dropped. He certainly would have stifled such a remark if he had been able. He suspected such a sneer was the last thing many people have witnessed across the ages.

Just as the elder made to speak, his claws already curling at the hilt of his own sword, a figure appeared beside him. Kain had come around the crumbling wall with an impressive level of silence given his size. His weary golden eyes swept over Raziel once and then fell elsewhere. Despite the tiredness in his eyes he stood as tall and proud as he always had, if not taller. Very little seemed to have changed save perhaps the crown of horns adorning his brow. Were they longer?

"I see you wasted no time in irritating my guest, Raziel." Kain said in an offhand manner.

"Your guest, indeed." Vorador huffed.

" _Kain- !"_ came Raziel's voice once again in mixture of surprise and relief.

"Use your mouth, boy." Kain remarked whist he turned his attention to the eldest vampire.

" _My…_ " Raziel knit his brow. He reluctantly brought a hand to his face. Finding resistance beyond his cheekbones had him draw his hand away in surprise. He shifted his jaw. His lips parted. Having had no mandible to speak of since his twisted resurrection he had been using a type of telepathic vampire Whisper to speak. Raziel brought his fingers back up to his newly intact throat with a quiet hum. His vocal chords sang pleasantly beneath his touch.

"The perimeter is silent for now." Kain had been saying. "The way you spoke of it made this temple out to be larger." He continued with just enough a lilt in his voice to be aggravating.

"It **is** -" Vorador stressed, bristling with indignation. Kain ignored this and turned his head to address Raziel.

"And you. You wouldn't happen to know how the hylden came to very specifically free you from the Reaver in what I assume was an attempt to disarm me?" Even Kain's questions sounded more like statements, like orders to fill. Remaining on the ground Raziel's brow furrowed again.

"The. Hylden…" Raziel's voice returned quiet and cracked from his dark lips. Now he remembered being exorcized. The tall crested figures. He hadn't seen living hylden before that. Before Kain could speak again Raziel clapped his claws to the ground to indicate a stay of motion as he gathered his thoughts. It seemed an arduous endeavor.

"The Reaver," he began, his eyes remaining downward and focused on nothing. "It is not a subtle presence… Most especially to itself. If they thought to disarm you by nullifying…me? They obviously don't know how the Soul Reaver works." His voice returned to a familiar cadence the more he spoke. As he finished Raziel looked up at Kain to see if that was the answer he wanted. Kain's gaze was cast to the side, his lips pressed thin in thought.

"They certainly made an appearance of you for not knowing." Came Vorador, the accusation back in his voice.

"Anyone can make a summoning circle if one knows the ritual." Raziel said with a slight wave of his hand. "They sorely misjudged the amount of energy they were dealing with being that they were all quite surprised to be devoured." Despite everything there was a cheekiness underlying his weary, drawn words.

Vorador's demeanor quieted at this. "What exactly **are** you? You've the Whisper and new appearance of a vampire- " He began with renewed earnest.

"I was a vampire." Was Raziel's melancholy reply.

"How precisely does that become past tense?"

"…How does anything become past tense?"

"Now listen here, ghoul-" Vorador again leaned forward, teeth flashing. Kain, stifling his amusement, gave attention to movement at his left. The semi-transparent spirit of a long dead woman drifted near him, body missing beyond the tattered hem of her gently billowing gown. She was assessing the Reaver at Kain's shoulder with her remaining eye.

"What has happened to the sword, Kain. It is the only thing you carry. How do- " Her voice would have been melodic if it weren't chastising.

"Yes, hello Ariel." Was Kain's dry retort as he took the Reaver from its wrapping upon his back.

"Ariel?" Raziel looked up just as the specter looked down at an echoing of her name. Raziel smiled for the first time in a millennia. Ariel paused a moment.

"Who is this?" she asked.

Before she could be answered Kain had set the tip of the Reaver in the ancient stone mere centimeters from Raziel's resting foot. A burning white arc of energy snapped between the two. Raziel reactively ducked backwards. This was a more acrobatic maneuver than his body wanted to take. His nerves lit up again and instead of winding down they stopped completely. This feeling he knew.

"Oh dear." Was all he said prefacing the entirety of his newly gained body literally dissolving. To the elder vampires looking on Raziel was completely gone within a matter of seconds. There remained only a handful of stray blue motes flurrying in the empty space before fading away themselves. Ariel held a delicate finger out towards the vampires suggesting they wait as she too faded entirely from view.


	4. Casual Phantasmogoria

Chapter Three:  
Casual Phantasmagoria

Kain and Vorador dissipated from view as if consumed by coastal fog. The world warped and twisted, becoming cooler shades of blue and teal. The ambient silence of the ruins gave way to a muted cacophony of anguished voices lamenting what was lost. Raziel felt instantly calmed to be in a familiar setting. As nightmarish as the spectral realm was it far more welcome than the ceaseless nothingness that was inhabiting the Reaver.

Still on the ground Raziel brought his legs beneath him and sat up straight. He then realized his well-worn cowl was draped about his shoulders. Glancing down he gave pause to find himself returned to his skeletal form. His exposed muscle and tendons were again a rich cerulean blue reflective of the spectral purgatory he occupied. The Wraith Reaver remained, jutting from his right palm as a blazing ethereal blade.

"Welcome back, then." He thought aloud to himself. The white light pulsed and flickered softly as if in response.

"Oh!" A startled female voice bade him look back up. "Raziel? It is you." Ariel had appeared, now bathed in spectral colors. Her slender, frayed hands were clasped at the front of her dress. As she nodded her head forward her ever-roiling curtain of blonde hair followed and danced in a frame around her face. There was no aggression there.

"It is." Raziel replied, trying to recall the last instance he had met her. "And you remember my name?"

"I do. You told me."

"I told you?" He didn't remember doing so before. Then he remembered the broken silence in the Reaver. He remembered being more than happy to talk incessantly. Although freshly freed it seemed so distant and again surreal being trapped in the sword. His head tilted to the left in thought, his cowl yawning at his opposing cheekbone.

"Was that real?" He wondered.

Ariel pressed her lips thin in a subdued smile as she drifted down to the wraith's level.

"Yes, that was real. As is this, I'm afraid. Just as I have been freed from my prison with a swing of a generous sword you too have come to be free." She spoke gently as if reassuring a cornered animal. In this instance Raziel didn't mind.

"With much less benevolence in my case, I suspect." He remarked as he stood. Energy returned to him in his own terms over time in the realm of the dead. In fact it seemed to be quicker and more substantial than her remembered, but then remembering things was proving to give him trouble at the moment. Raziel afforded the lost souls a passing glance while they meandered aimlessly to and fro. Those that were curiously observing then hid, darting behind crumbled leaning walls.

"How long…?" He began. Words weren't coming to him as quickly when he was searching for them.

"Since what exactly?" Ariel filled in.

"The fall of the Pillars?" Raziel asked tentatively, trying not to linger on the horrid events that followed.

"It has been 400 years hence." The underlying sorrow in her voice spoke to a unique understanding.

Raziel's now bare ribcage heaved with another sigh that moved no air. Too much. Everything was far too much for him to be expected to handle. Yet he continued. Even as events became more and more convoluted, more and more sinister, he persisted. It was quite literally the only thing he could do anymore. In the face of it all: persevere. His claws came to his forehead in frustration then ran back through his hair in a mannerism he'd had for over a thousand years.

"Why are you here?" he inquired at length. "In fact what in dawn's name is Vorador doing here? Where is here?" As the wraith's questions began to beget only more questions Ariel held up a hand to him.

"Kain needed to locate this temple. Much of it is in ruins. I was searching for perhaps another way in." She spoke after he quieted. She knew full well what he meant. She wagered it would be more helpful to bring him into the present. Raziel picked up on this, only speaking after another pause.

"Very well." He said at the end of one last habitual sigh. "A moment, if you would." His cowl slipped from his face given a gentle tug. Ariel did her best not to flinch at the extent of Raziel's maimed appearance. With the entirety of his lower jaw once again missing his mangled exposed throat flashed with bright light emanating from within him. Ariel, with the leftmost half of her once beautiful face sheared off in her distant murder, had little room to judge. She had, however, seen the SoulReaver in action as Kain wielded it. Any fraction of such terrible power was more than worth giving some space.

The specter silently shifted from one realm to the other. The spectral pale drained away, returning the world to its dark saturation. She turned to see both vampires remained now leaning against the same wall. She was secretly impressed. Neither of the two were particularly agreeable nor did they make a habit of communicating their intentions. It would not have surprised her had they wandered off.

"That was certainly the spirit trapped in the Reaver. How did such occur?" Ariel inquired. She tried to use a neutral tone this time. The combined hubris of the aged Kain and Vorador was not something to invoke offhand.

"The Hylden occurred." Was Kain's somewhat agitated response.

"Hylden sorcery, was it?" Vorador followed wryly.

"Anyone can make a summoning circle…" Ariel said quietly, earning a rolling of the eyes from Vorador.

Before the elder had anything to say about it both vampires became aware of the ground rumbling. A hand quite suddenly burst forth from beneath the scattered stone. Vorador had drawn his sword by the time a full figure clambered out of the ground before them. Shaking the dirt and detritus from itself it proved to be very blue.

"Well than-" came Raziel's voice as bone and flesh shifted into place. A second surge of transformation seized him by surprise. In much the same grim manner his entire vampire visage returned to him with violent torsion. He only cried out when a new set of bones erupted from his back and drove him to his knees. In the second of silence that followed his cowl fluttered to a rest across his right shoulder.

"Well, than." Kain echoed, bringing his talons to his jaw in a gesture of contemplation. Raziel remained kneeling, waiting out the waves of pain sweeping through his now full body. His claws dug into the newly disturbed earth. From his shoulder blades large bat-like wings curled in the same tension, delicately half folded over his hunched form.

"Do I merit an explanation yet or did you plan to kill me once I got you where you wanted to go?" Vorador snapped impatiently.

"Calm yourself, old one. You'll get your answers soon enough." Kain responded in what may have been a lackluster attempt to be reassuring.

Vorador continued to be incredulous. Ariel payed him no heed as she tentatively dropped her hands from her mouth. She drifted down to Raziel's level in a motion reflective of their previous conversation.

"How did you do that?" she asked just as incredulous as the vampire. She did not think it possible for a creature of the spectral realm to manifest directly into the physical plane.

"Hm? Oh. I- I suppose I could show you at a time." Raziel answered after he had shaken his bangs from his eyes, recovering his scattered senses. Ariel's hands retreated back to her mouth with a small gasp as he lifted his head to face her. Raziel may not have been able to register her visually while trapped in the blade but, as well as remembering him previous, she could perceive him. She had grown accustom to the skeletal blue wraith. So much so that it didn't occur to her that he was once something else. Despite the pointed ears, the dark lips, and even the otherworldly light burning behind his eyes his features were now undeniably handsome. Ariel knew what it was to lose everything but the wraith was unrecognizable. She couldn't imagine what it had taken to destroy him so completely.

Raziel had merely given her a solemn nod in acknowledgement before going on to address Vorador. "I apologize sincerely, Lord Vorador. To answer your question I am a very specific type of ghoul. I am a wraith." He said, taking on a calmer even tone. This seemed to quell Vorador's aggression.

"And what is the difference?" The elder vampire asked with an arched brow.

"Diet, mainly…" was Raziel's reply. Kain and Ariel gave him very similar looks of concern. A small smile graced his face for a moment before he spoke again. "There is much I could sit here and explain. To do so would take ages. Therefore, presently, may I ask where we are exactly?"


	5. Elements

Chapter Four:  
Elements

Vorador narrowed his eyes. There was clearly a complex web of events hanging well beyond him. He did not appreciate it. This Kain, as his personality had already proven several times over never mind the Reaver, was playing a dangerous game if he was so confidently tampering with the time stream. After a moment's consideration he decided to answer the wraith.

"Answers for answers, then? Very well." With this he swept an arm behind him towards the crumbling wall. "This is an ancient vampire temple northwest of Meridian, a large amalgam of smaller shrines to the elements." Raziel recognized the worn circular symbol of water as Vorador stepped aside.

For the first time Raziel thought to take in his surroundings. The open architecture was indeed indicative of winged builders. Raziel noted the same structures and motifs he'd seen traversing the oldest of ancient vampire forges dedicated to the elements. Looking behind him he saw across a hall, having been destroy and now opened completely to the night air, there was an identical vestibule to the one in which they stood. The tines of the symbol of fire peered out from behind long settled rubble. An occasional dot of light listed lazily among the moss taken root there. Raziel had to tear his attention from the hypnotic fireflies when Vorador continued.

"It was razed by the hylden in the War, long before I was created as it were. That would be why it isn't as fierce a concern to them currently." He said, closely following the wraith's attentions. When said attention returned to him he found a subtle concern there. Quite expressive despite what seemed to be hellish light having burned his eyes out from within.

"I see…and. Why are we here?" Raziel asked. He brought his claws together at his lap. The tip of a talon began to tap at the back of another. As far as he knew the answer could be almost anything. Answers he'd fought for previously were about as easy to hear as they were to attain. Vorador uttered a growl of disdain.

"Chasing glyphs as I understand it." He said with much the same inflection. Kain gave the elder a short glance filled with thinly veiled annoyance.

"Believe me when I say centuries of research have led us to such. I feel as though we are close now." Kain spoke as he stood away from the wall. Raziel briefly noted the irony of Kain's most earnest voice giving rise to only metaphors and vague ideations. He'd gathered just enough sense not to point this out aloud. Vorador, on the other hand, was in no mood for mystery.

"It could very well be leading you into a trap. One that I have no business being caught up in." Vorador announced.

"Life is a trap, old one." Kain replied without missing a beat. "I will not stop you from making a choice but know this: to learn what I have learned will serve you much greater purpose than to return to Meridian presently." His tone contained no conjecture. This was fact. Vorador regarded him with resentment. Kain in his time had been known to be many things less than pleasant but a liar was not one of them.

In the midst of the elder vampire's hostilities Raziel had been surveying more of their surroundings. They seemed to be near what had once been the entrance to the temple long destroyed. Down the wide central corridor he could see another cloister adjacent to the vestibule of the fire element. The arrangement reminded him of how humans built their cathedrals shaped of a cross representing surely stolen winged heraldry. This architectural predecessor undoubtedly had all six elements branched off the central way.

Engrossed in his thoughts he made to stand. His bones creaked under the new weight but allowed it. In trying to return to some semblance of posture he realized his center of balance was completely different. Daring to take a step had been the wrong move, righted only by the ends of his wings flaring in a brief panic and not at all by whatever was nearest him. He'd clapped his claws over Ariel's shoulder in his attempt to remain standing but it was obvious she would have only come with him to the ground, having no anchor.

Raziel muttered an apology at Ariel's stunned expression. Her shock remained whilst he found a proper balance. He began to make his way, more cautiously than he'd liked, toward the rubble of a collapsed arch separating them from the rest of the temple. Ariel conceded to not speaking her concern at the time and slowly drifted after him.

"And where are you going?" came Kain's voice across the vestibule. He'd turned his head to see Raziel perched upon a fallen pillar gazing listlessly inward.

"Ah. How much do you know about the elements?" Raziel asked without looking away from the temple's center.

"As remnants of ancient magics: nothing." Kain replied. This earned an audible scoff from Vorador. A deep frown betrayed the elder as having much he could say but all he voiced was a short response.

"What do you know of the elements then, Wraith? Enlighten us."

"Well. Just as balance is the central culminating paradigm of the Pillars so too do the elements culminate in spirit." When the vampires started walking towards him said wraith dropped to the opposite side of the wreckage.

"And how do you know this?" Kain asked, following Raziel. Cresting the ruin Kain could see the rest of the temple as Raziel made some smart remark ("Against my will, honestly."). The remainder of the rectangular temple was lit by moonlight spilling in from a central circular opening that was half collapsed itself. He saw four adjacent vestibules. In his research he'd come to recognize these symbols and what they represented. As to what they were capable of, how, and why remained beyond him. One answer begets two more questions as he had grown used to. Indeed there was one large circular symbol in the middle as Raziel had suggested. In its center there was a long dried pool once used to commune with an ancient deity. An altar sat just beyond it cracked and dwarfed by the surrounding arches. Braziers lay toppled where they fell a thousand years ago. Framing the altar on each side were what had once been large circular structures.

"Look at that. This temple is larger than meets the eye." Raziel piped up as he had approached them. The scraping of his adjusting talons was muffled by centuries of dust and dirt.

"As I've said." Vorador quite suddenly appeared beside him. "However the first thing the hylden likely did was ensure these portals never operate again."

After giving Vorador his attention Raziel turned his head to the furthest portal. Only a small fraction remained standing. Most of it was in pieces on the ground. The right portal in front of him, however, seemed to be all in one piece. Only the bottom and it's pedestal were slight obscured by dirt and debris. It may have been buried once but it looked to have been cleared somewhat. Younger shoots of grass inched upward from around broken gravel toward the yawning sky light.

He found the thought to be mildly alarming. He'd been through many ancient ruins, so many that they were almost comforting. Not once had there been a sigh of any living thing. Nothing navigates ancient vampire ruins by accident. Against their better judgement, perhaps, but not by accident.

"It seems someone might have sought to rectify that." Raziel said as he stepped forward. He reached up to touch the portal's zenith above him. A sensation of energy swept from a dormant socket in the molding and gently faded to static past his wrist.

"Yes, well. I wouldn't touch things you are not learned in." Vorador barked as the wraith withdrew his hand and observed it.

"You're far too late for that suggestion to take any root." Kain had swept in behind the two.

"The stone is missing." Raziel said absentmindedly.

"A sharp one, you are." was Vorador's wholly unnecessary retort.

Kain, ignoring the both of them, stepped onto the portal's pedestal and pointed a talon at the ground just beyond it. A symbol was etched into the stone. It was by no means artisanal but clear enough to recognize the depiction of two pairs of wings overlapping one another. One pair appeared feathered whilst the foremost pair was much like Raziel's. "There. I have been compelled to follow it but it has no historical meaning I could gather. Are you familiar with it?" Kain asked turning his head to Raziel. The wraith considered it a moment before replying.

"No, I'm afraid I haven't come across such a crest. The word beneath it, however, reads "earth"." While Raziel looked upward across the temple the vampires glanced down at the symbol. Scrawled beneath was presumably a word written in an angular, geometric language not at all similar to Nosgoth's common tongue. Raziel had already sauntered off towards the far right vestibule when both looked back up.

"You can read hylden now and I'm not supposed to be suspicious?" Vorador called after him.

"Is that what that was?" Raziel called back turning on his heels as he approached the last cloister. "Earth." He announced more to himself than anyone else. The vampires looked on while the wraith seemed to be looking down and adjusting his positioning among the stonework.

"You trust this thing? It doesn't seem to be all there." Vorador remarked to Kain and earning himself an unamused sidelong glance. Their attention was caught again when a bright ethereal light uncoiled from Raziel's right arm, forming distinctive flameberg curves and tapering to a point. "What-?" was all Vorador could manage at the moment. The ghastly blade cycled through several different colors as the wraith drew him arm back.

It stopped at a verdant green twisting in wisps from the white hot core before Raziel threw his arm forward. A pulse of energy jumped from the blade and into something within the vestibule that gave an audible click. A moment of silence followed. Raziel held up a claw in a similar staying motion used earlier by Ariel. Then the ground began to tremble. Pebbles clattered at the cloven feet of the elder vampires. Before them large portions of stones and earth rose into the air leaving trails of dust. Several slabs followed, soon quieting into a stairway of silently floating platforms.

From the topmost of these platforms Raziel leapt to a now nearby archway several meters off the ground. After a moment he simply sat at the edge, his legs hanging over the ancient molding. He held up a small oval object that glinted in the moonlight. "Someone certainly went out of their way to hide this." Raziel piped in an almost cheerful tone.

"I'll be thrice damned." Vorador muttered under his breath.

"It looks like you are the one with the answers this time around, Raziel." Kain called up to the other, bemused.

"What a terrible turn of events." The wraith replied. The earthen surfaces began to groan and slowly settle down to their original places very casually like a herd of cattle headed to board. Raziel leapt from the arch without a second thought. Grabbing his wings out of habit he was content to allow himself to glide downward. He alighted upon the portal's pedestal and held the stone out to Vorador.


	6. Those Freed

Chapter 5:  
Those Freed

The oval stone in Raziel's claws caught the moonlight with numerous inlaid faces. A kind of polished opal if he had to hazard a guess. He noted each keystone he'd had to tirelessly track down was unique. He supposed Vorador already knew this and could not physically care less judging by the look on his face.

"The honor is yours." Vorador drawled with a wave of his hand. Raziel wasn't sure how the elder made it sound more of an inconvenience than an honor but he obliged nonetheless. As he made to place the stone in the center of the portal he briefly entertained the notion that Vorador may have just wanted to see him need to reach for the mooring, doing so making him aware of his shorter stature. Such a trivial thought evaporated as the shimmering opal found its destined place. A familiar ancient energy sparked and crackled to life. The spirit along his right arm pulsed subtly in response as a swirling wave of distorted matter overtook the hollow center of the ring.

"Cheers." Raziel chirped, setting foot through the ominous portal.

"You're just going to walk straight into that with no idea where it leads?" Vorador snapped dubiously.

Raziel gave pause. "…Yes." He should know, having lost track of how many portals he'd gone in and out of in Vorador's mansion alone.

Vorador's talons went to the bridge of his nose momentarily. He then ushered the wraith out of his way and strode through the portal himself. Although more wary, Kain followed. Raziel hummed in amusement and looked to Ariel. The ghost hovered nearby with uncertainty written across the legible side of her face.

Since being freed from her leash to the Pillars she had been following Kain across Nosgoth in some lingering sense of duty. Now Vorador was in company. Now things were proving much more complicated then she had ever known them to be. Facing down this portal felt much like facing down her doubts. Was it in her place to pursue such cultures far beyond her own? Would she complicate matters? Where else had she to go? In this moment more than before she felt as if she were the frayed end of a loose thread, having fulfilled her purpose and now merely existing unsecured.

"Has my time not come and gone?" She spoke at length looking to the pale wraith. Raziel met her concerned expression with a small smile.

"The thing about greatness is that it is messy and difficult. And so if you find yourself destined for it I've recently found its best to make your own time." Raziel said quietly after a thoughtful pause. "Not necessarily as literally as Kain but-" He offered her an open hand, the left to be specific, in lieu of finishing his verbal welcome. Ariel had not expected to experience any kind of solidarity after her demise. Although bizarre this was not entirely unwelcomed. She wrapped her slender rot-speckled fingers hesitantly around one of Raziel's offered talons and followed him through the crackling portal.

The feeling was not altogether unfamiliar to her. It felt much like shifting planes amplified exponentially. A curious swirling sensation at her core slowed to a stop as the nigh unexplainable vortex of light and color gave way to a torch lit chamber. Now behind the large vampires, she could really only see that they both had their hands at their weapons. Sounds of movement echoed off of lofty pillars hewn of red rock. From a vaulted opening in front of them a thin figure emerged. On peculiar hooved feet a hylden took one step beyond the threshold and froze, dropping the pitch it was carrying.

Kain wordlessly took the Reaver from his back. Torch light flashed along the sharpened curves of the sword. The hylden's bright green eyes went wide. It let out a shrill terrified shriek and began to scramble backwards. Kain took a step in tandem, towering over it.

"Alj'pak!" A male voice rang out and prompted the hylden at Kains' feet to mutter pleas for help, nothing more than quiet squeaking. Kain readied his blade for whosoever was approaching. Behind him Vorador had drawn his sword as well. Another figure darted down the corridor, much too quick to be a hylden, and threw itself in front of the trembling creature.

"Breached! You will not harm her!" Indeed this was not a hylden but a young vampire. Choppy dark brown hair was harried behind pointed ears in his haste. He maintained a defensive stance even as his vampiric serpentine eyes fell across the Reaver. The rage faded from his expression into utter shock. A loud metallic clattering drew everyone's attention. Vorador had nearly dropped his sword in sheathing it.

"Balance be! Jacques? Is that you?" Vorador inquired, coming forward. The young vampire clapped his hands together at his chest before exclaiming, "Sire!"

"Good lord, boy, I thought you dead." Vorador clasped his claws at the boy's shoulders, Kain having stepped aside.

"I thought me dead as well, my lord, when my keepers cast me out at the riverbank." Jacques spoke candidly and with a nod to a single shackle remaining at his left wrist. His accent indeed revealed him as a Meridian local. He then reached down and helped the hylden to its feet with care. "But the Coven! They saved me, spirited me away to recover. Alj'pak, she dragged me out of the pipes that day, sire, no lie." Jacques expressed an excited earnestness. He had motioned to the hylden whom had clung tightly to his arm in attempt to hide behind him.

"Oh?" Vorador peered behind his stolen kin at the quivering thing.

"What is this Coven?" No one commanded attention quite like Kain. His voice filled the small chamber.

"And this-! Is this-? Is that-? Sire, did you find the Scion of Balance?" Jacques motioned to Kain and then the Reaver as he carried on in a hushed tone like he were trying to quell his own enthusiasm.

"Did I? Are you the Scion of Balance, then?" Vorador asked after Kain with little interest. Kain was of course known to be the Guardian of Balance that succeeded Ariel but the Scion was something different if the prophecies spun any truth. It was, however, not a position many were left to know about. Vorador certainly did not retain enough of the prophecies to pass them on to many of his kin, apathy aside.

"Unfortunately." Kain stated as he lowered the Reaver, not putting it away quite yet. The rest of his party simultaneously scoffed in agreement causing Kain to cast a sneer over his shoulder.

"We've done it! The Scion of Balance is actually here!" Jacques tittered excitedly squeezing the hylden's bony shoulder in a friendly gesture. Raziel, lingering at the portal with Ariel, found the fledgling's gaiety refreshing. There had been little to smile about in the past millennium. Kain undoubtedly was less enthused by this.

"I cannot believe this." The hylden had murmured to her vampire companion in a quiet rasp.

"You should know I do not appreciate being baited like an animal." Kain interjected, louder this time. The pair immediately ceased chittering, very nearly shrinking in his shadow. Kain cut the most imposing figure in perhaps all of Nosgoth. Indeed the breadth of his shoulders was twice that of Jacques'. The claws of his hand not gripping a wicked flamberg were poised in threat, looking more than capable of instantly trepanning any unfortunate skull in his way.

"Of course, my lord-!" Jacques hurriedly bowed at the waist. "I- it's that we need help you see- ah. I'm no good for explanations." He stammered, suddenly seeing need to be nervous under two pairs of judgmental golden eyes. The hylden whispered at his ear, "Jik and Zeke must know."

"Yes! If you'll hear it, please, we have those better suited for all answers. Please, follow me." Jacques said with another bow to the vampires. He was undoubtedly one of Vorador's brood. Vorador held no reservations in following the fledgling. Raziel found this odd for a moment being that Vorador had reservations about literally everything. Then again the promise of answers was an incredibly potent motivator as he well knew. Kain followed closely.

The hylden Alj'Pak stood to the side to let them by. Her head was bowed and hands clasped as she tried to be as non-threatening as possible, a difficult feat with glowing eyes, as Raziel sympathized. He afforded her a curious glance while he followed the vampires. He was met with only the tined crest that swept back over her skull being that she was very concentrated on the flagstones. The dichotomy between the hylden he'd been presented historically and this terrified individual sparked a sadness in him. History is written by the victors indeed.

The hall was narrow with room for two shoulder to shoulder but tall as was a common trait in the ancient's more indoor spaces. Gazing at passing reliefs sporting time worn paint Raziel noticed there were indeed no windows. While ancient portals had often taken him to self-contained shrines that could have very well been anywhere imaginable this hallway struck him as unusually cloying. No sooner had he thought that then the corridor quite abruptly opened up. What lay before them could scarcely be described as a room. It was in fact a large spacious area open above to the night sky. The moon looked in, framed by jagged bluffs. This appeared to be built right in the unreachable center of the coastal mountain range.

The moonlight fell through the cavernous space to the ground illuminating the work and rest of a surprising number of people all of whom shifted their attention to the passing new arrivals. Excited and confused whispers followed their gazes. There seemed to be a large mix of people inhabiting here resting, sewing, or otherwise working in this great hall. In large part they were humans but there were also vampires and an occasional hylden. Though varied, hardship was written on each and every face. Many were undoubtedly escaped slaves, exiled laborers, or convicts left for dead by the new Sarafan regime.

Raziel was taken aback. He had been dealing with manifest destinies wracked by the hands of individuals for so long. Masses, enemy or even ally, were all but faceless pawns, nothing behind their armor. It was only relatively recently had he come to denote the power of individuals responsible for their fates within the whole. Walking into an ancient mountain temple filled with a community of interracial refugees gave from to his previous thoughts. He wasn't quite sure what he was feeling in the moment but it seemed…positive.

The wraith was drawn out of his thought s when the paused party was buffeted by a sudden gentle wind. Raziel was quick to write off hearing perhaps the beating of wings but not quite quick enough to be wrong.

"Blessed pinfeathers, Uncle Vorador! You have found us!" a small excited voice cried out. Raziel turned to witness the split second Vorador was engulfed in a flurry of black feathers. He almost could not comprehend what he was seeing. An ancient vampire: sky blue skin, cloven hands, and most notably a very impressive pair of black feathered wings. Far from being Janos Audron, the last of the ancients, this being was very stunted. A pinioned child had his small arms wrapped about Vorador's neck as the elder had come to support him.

"Zekiel! My word, is this where you've been?" Vorador had exclaimed in return. His voice boomed with a jubilant tone that was nearly just as hard to believe. Indeed a smiling Vorador was very different from the aggressive, apathetic vampire Nosgoth knew him to be. Looking on, Raziel was seized by another wave of devastating sadness, one he did not afford the time to unpack in the moment. He looked to Kain just as the shock left his maker's face.

"You're much more popular than your temperament would imply, old one." Kain said casually. Vorador's expression returned to unamused.

"Which is much more than we can say for you." Vorador replied instantly. The specter and the wraith scoffed in agreement. Kain noticeably paused, decided not to acknowledge them before he spoke again.

"I would very much like to know why I am here." His silken words held the same inflection of measured patience whether being combative or demanding answers this evening. Raziel noticed this but did not comment saying instead, "The last time Kain was baited into doing something the Pillars fell. I do hope this is a less destructive path to take." Ariel hid a smile behind her hand as Vorador uttered a mirthless laugh.

"This is Kain?" Zekiel, Jacques, and Alj'Pak blurted in unison and with various degrees of surprise.'

"The Reaver!" the small vampire boy's equally golden eyes went wide upon seeing the blade. "Oh! Yes, we have much to discuss, very much! Thank you Jacques! Please, follow me!" Zekiel fluttered from his post at Vorador's hip and hit the ground running, chattering all the while.

"He's excitable." Was all Vorador said as the followed the clacking of little talons across the great hall.


	7. The Coven

Chapter 6: The Coven

Zekiel all but sprinted the length of the great hall. He was dwarfed especially by humongous open archways through which he'd just flown. Now he ran along the cool stone floor weaving through an occasional group of people.

"Jik'Lex! Jik'Lex you'll never guess what we found in the east entrance!" He yelled ahead of himself. At the far wall was a seating area not unlike several others in the space: partly original architecture and partly scavenged resources. A tall, thin hylden stood over another tucked amongst several stacks of books and turned to the oncoming vampire.

"If you say you're heralding another prophesied raccoon Zekiel, I haven't the time." Jik'Lex croaked as the ancient child came to a stop. The hylden looked down at him and adjusted a small pair of spectacles on the stunted bridge of his convex nostrils. Zekiel waved a hand up at the other as he caught his breath in a couple of gasps.

"I am heralding the Scion of Balance." He breathed, grabbing the hylden's hand and giving it an excited tug.

"What? Do not jest of it." Jik'Lex began. Although he sounded reprimanding there was still a hope on his face as he looked up. Indeed Alj'Pak was leading a bizarre group in Zekiel's wake. Three apparent vampires were approaching, including the infamous Vorador, and trailed by the ghost of a woman. Reaching the space Alj'Pak gave a curt bow and once again stepped aside. Jik'Lex stood stunned for a moment under the sharp expectant gaze of beings clearly far older than him. He blinked several times before he found his voice.

"Oh my. Welcome, then. Welcome to the Coven. Please, please it's not grand but have a seat." The bespectacled hylden gestured to a length of bowed marble bench opposite his piles of books. He then bent over the figure swaddled among the stacks and chattered to it in a different language.

"You're a hard vampire to find, Uncle Vorador." Zekiel piped up. He followed on the heels of the extravagant vampire as he came to confidently seat himself at the far end of the bench.

"I have to be." Vorador stated, inclining his head to the winged boy whom promptly perched next to him. Zekiel nodded thoughtfully.

"Zeke has claimed the Scion of Balance is among you?" Jik'Lex turned back to the vampires glancing furtively among them. His gaze landed on the largest. Something about the wicked crest jutting from his brow in conjunction with his long white hair struck a primal fear in the hylden. As if to acknowledge this the vampire leveled the actual Soul Reaver between them before setting it against the marble bench next to the much enchanted ancient boy. The sword held a heavy presence all its own. Jik'Lex tried to ignore the sense of dread creeping up his spine.

"I am Jik'Lex." The hylden said after another brief pause. He then reprimanded himself mentally. The Scion of Balance was not going to care his name. A wheezed utterance of a few hylden words from behind him prompted a second introduction. "This is Ak'Lun-A'Jyk'Kan, the eldest of us here."

Nestled in a number of fabrics reclined another hylden. Paler than the others and emaciated he looked absolutely ancient. His heavily lidded eyes peered out of deeply sunken sockets. A large crack in a fluke of his exotic head crest extended as a scar all the way down the right side of his face. Squinting intensely he lifted a skeletal hand and beckoned to the scion wishing for a better look.

Kain obliged, warily considering this old thing as it considered him. Raziel was partly still picking apart that string of consonants presented as a name but fell in beside him. A'Jyk'Kan reached trembling fingers out to touch the vampire. In a motion Raziel reverted all the way back to Empire behavior, stepping ahead of his sire to intercept. He caught the hylden's hand with his own, displaying, however, the opposite of the quick violence he had been known for in that bygone era.

"Not a personable one, I'm afraid." Raziel said to the ancient one as he released him. A'Jyk'Kan's wearied but enraptured expression turned to the wraith at the physical contact. As his hand was freed the hylden reached out again with both and cupped his gnarled fingers at either side of Raziel's face. Raziel blink owlishly a few times but allowed the ancient to linger. It was impossible to tell if he was smiling. His lips had long shriveled and receded completely from his teeth. Perhaps there was creasing at the corners of his tired, dimly lit verdant eyes. After a moment the hylden reclined back and folded his hands to his laboring chest.

Kain had stepped back almost defensively. Ignoring Raziel he looked to Jik'Lex and asked with a sneer, "What are we to make of hylden conspiring against hylden?"

Jik'Lex appeared stunned briefly. His brow then furrowed as much as they could and he adjusted his spectacles in vain. He stood straighter and tried his best to meet Kain's unflinching gaze.

"I beg your pardon but we are not all of the same opinion. We are individuals just as you. Some of us refuse to stand by corruption even if we are poorer for it." The hylden voiced with offense. He motioned to the great hall dotted with groups of people with nowhere left to go.

"It is easy to follow the ebb of a corrupted tide until you are personally affected." Kain spoke up in a contemplative manner. He knew this to be true more so than anyone in Nosgoth's history. Although he was perhaps speaking in self-reflection the hylden replied.

"Yes. I have been Lord Ak'Lun's assistant and adviser since I could trot." Again Jik'Lex's critical self knew prophesied beings would not care about his personal problems but greater was the urge to justify himself if not all of the Coven. "Lord Ak'Lun was a decorated general from the end of the _wars_ brought through the portal for his expertise. We were pushed along relentlessly despite his great age. When he caught and broke his leg in the canyons the troop left him where he lie to die of exposure…The Sarafan regime uses promises of the past and yet disregards it at the same time. To avenge it without learning from it." He shook his head. The light bronze tether from his glasses tapped against the crest they were affixed to.

"Alj'Pak refused to continue engineering for a genocidal monster and only escaped at the sacrifice of Ilj'Hak, now in the Eternal Prison. Jaques left for dead by spiteful slavers, Zekiel the last of his kind, our leader Lady Ak'Ton on the fringes of all societies. The circumstances hardly matter so long as in the end we are willing to fight." A silence followed Jik'Lex's speech and the confidence began to escape him. He tightly clutched a book he'd picked from a leaning stack. He couldn't read the piercing looks of the elder vampires. While he had no way of knowing, they were surprised to hear such determined sentiment from what, in any other circumstance, be a nameless hylden. Raziel, now crouched among the books at the side of the ancient hylden, had a small but demure smile on his face seen only by Ariel.

"Whom did you say lead you?" Vorador inquired, sounding very much entitled to an answer. His eyes narrowed when he was met with Jik'Lex searching for a word beyond him and knowing laughter from Zekiel at his side.

"Oh- what is it the humans call her?" Jik'Lex drummed his fingers along the book he held, looking to his charge as if he had any idea. Ak'Lun-A'Jyk'Kan gave a dismissive wave as he, in fact, had no idea. He rested his gesturing hand on Raziel's head. Raziel put up no resistance being that the ancient hylden looked quite pleased with himself to have made a new acquaintance.

"The Seer, Uncle Vorador, you remember her?" Zekiel chimed. The wide and somewhat sly smile across the child's cherubim face insinuated that question was rhetorical and they both knew exactly what he was talking about.

"You can't be serious, Zekiel." Vorador said in a haughty tone of voice. He splayed a hand across the boy's chest as if to halt any mischief.

"Oh but he is serious." A female voice with a thick northern accent came from behind the vampires. Indeed a woman approached from a nearby vaulted corridor. Was she a hylden? She had large sweeping crests tapering from her temples but they framed a full, dark chestnut hairline. The protrusions at her back and elbows were not as chitinous as the other hylden present. In fact her face was stunningly human even with her milky, clouded eyes. She smiled where she stood tall and smelled of fire.

"Hist. Still wandering the canyons wearing next to nothing, I see." Vorador drawled casually. A worn band of cloth fastened at her chest and a glorified loincloth left very little to the imagination. A clawed yet five digit hand went to her bare hip.

"Vorador. Still layered in finery to hide how empty you are inside." The Seer replied without pause. Vorador lifted talons in a mock toast. "I'll drink to that." He said. The Seer chuckled and kissed the elder vampire's temple, fussing over his velvet vest with a string of words in a similarly northern language. " _A trecut prea mult timp, sunte_ _ţ_ _i_ _încăpăţânat_ _._ Good to see you alive, you bastard." She observed the new guests as Vorador grumbled.

"What have we here? Is this-?" Her gaze stopped at Kain now half turned to her.

"Hello again." He said, knowing exactly where she had just come from. Her stare remained fixated as she walked around the marble bench to get a better look.

"Lady Ak'Ton! This claims to be the Scion of Balance and ehm…company." Jik'Lex spoke up as The Seer squinted at the brazen entirety of this vampire.

"Yes. Yes! I can sense you are right. I thought perhaps it was just the Reaver," her eyes flit uneasily toward the sword resting innocuously against the stone. "But you are Kain?" she asked expectantly, looking him in the eye. Kain merely inclined his head in affirmation. The Seer gasped, her hands flying to her sternum. " _O doamne! Ce se_ _î_ _ntampl_ _ă_ _, e_ _ş_ _ti imens_ \- you look good, dear." She said after composing herself.

"2000 years will do that." Kain voiced wryly.

"2000 years- ?!" Several people exclaimed once again with varying degrees of surprise.

"Indeed I have been running from and back into fate for all this time. As such I would like to know why. I. Am. Here." Kain stressed the last four syllables with a deep growl beneath them. He was not fond of repeating himself.

"Oh you want reasons now, hm? You _have_ grown. Sta, sit, sit then we shall tell you." The Seer nodded. She put hands at his back and arm, steering him to the bench. Her grasp was nowhere near the breadth of his bicep. Although with an irritated scowl Kain picked up the Reaver and sat next to Zekiel. He crossed his arms over his wide chest.

"Well?"


	8. The Auxiliary Plan

Chapter 7:  
The Auxiliary Plan

The meek hylden Alj'Pak had hurriedly fetched a seat for the Seer. It looked to be a requisitioned tavern stool but the mysterious witch sat upon it as if it were a throne. She had an air of old royalty comparable to Vorador despite their wildly differing aesthetics. It was no wonder they were acquainted. Vorador had said she owed him a favor but it was not in Kain's nature to ask after it or care.

"You are a great presence Kain." She said, inclining her head his direction. Kain recalled Raziel saying something similar of the Reaver when questioned earlier. "That is to say those with mind and soul linked to the land can feel a difference. Since the fall of the Pillars I have been keeping keen interest in this power roving Nosgoth."

"The fledgling that barged into my cabin demanding answers-?" A sly grin graced her face. Kain's expression remained cynical. "Yes, I felt it from him but not all of it, you see? Imagine my surprise coming back to the temple and being engulfed in this energy. It is you. Perhaps more than that?" The Seer trailed off, eyeing the Reaver. Her gaze briefly swept to Raziel perched opposite, a healthy length from the sword. Her attention snapped back to Kain when he spoke.

"What do you know of the Scion of Balance?" he asked.

"Not much, I'm afraid. It was no legend in my culture. Anyone with any idea is long dead. It is just putting a name to this force." She admitted, gesturing to Kain as being said force. "It was the ancient vampires that prophesied it and only when they were already in decline. Would you say that is so?" The Seer looked to Vorador and Zekiel at Kain's left.

Vorador shrugged, the motion amplified by his velvet epaulets. "It seemed that way." He paused, unsure if he wanted to divulge his personal opinions in mixed company. "I wrote it off for what it appeared to be: a lost, demolished people desperately clinging to any hope they could." Although the words were harsh and judgmental his expression was knowing. He had seen this desperation firsthand and what it did to an entire civilization. At his side Zekiel had grown quiet, his brows knit marring the otherwise pristine powder blue surface of his forehead.

"I only recall bits and pieces of scripture any more… Something about the Scion of Balance, heralded by the champion, would… "banish fatalistic duality for one god" or "against one god"? I can't be sure… I tried to avoid the preachings of the zealous… given what it drove them to." Zekiel spoke with his enthusiasm dampened in the subject of his extinct race. His long gone family.

No one among the Scion's party seemed surprised at the lack of any definitive information. Although usually one for answers Raziel thought this instance for the better. Kain was not a man to fit into molds. Kain, in fact, would go out of his way to break molds. It felt they were beyond the point of relying on guiding destinies and vague prophecies. Somehow they were going to make their own way.

"What I do know for certain is that you are connected to the heart of this land. Nosgoth has put its faith in you." The Seer imparted with a dramatic wave of her hand.

"Good to know we're doomed." Vorador muttered. This garnered a sigh from Ariel hovering quietly behind him.

"A romantic notion that has led me here to you for what reason?" Kain inquired. He ignored the elder vampire's gouging sarcasm being that it was not untrue. Kain spent the first two millennia of his undead life resenting the fate Nosgoth seemed to have pushed onto him. He asked for exactly none of it. Perhaps something may yet be done for it but it will be done on his own terms. The Seer offered him a sheepish smile.

"We thought perhaps such power may like to help us?" She clasped her hands at her thigh and tried to look encouraging. Kain narrowed his gold eyes.

"That's bold of you to assume." Kain said with thinly veiled contempt.

"We have been trying to open a portal of our own to the Demon Realm." The Seer admitted.

"That's insane, you know." Vorador said, earning a glare from the witch.

"Fii liniştit! Îţi voi explica!" she hissed at him. "We want to undermine the Sarafan's efforts from within."

"That is definitely insane." Kain remarked to Vorador whom nodded in agreement.

"You would have us sit and wait for death? Or some warped subjugation?" The Seer spat fiercely. The sudden compassion in her expression was mirrored in her body language.

"Yes." The vampires voiced in unison.

"No. We will not. There is a more sinister snake in this mire than Ak'Lun-Ilj'On's ego. If we do not warn the Banished Council and find out where Alj'Gik came from people will continue to die." Insistence clung to the sharpness that had crept into her voice.

"Ak'Lun-Ilj'On?" Raziel wondered aloud.

"Alj'Gik?" Kain followed up. Hylden syllables halted awkwardly on his lips.

"The public has come to know him as the Sarafan Lord. Ilj'On is his name, "The One", given to him by his overzealous father." Jik'Lex spoke up. He still clutched a book but the measured inquiry in his eyes had turned to anger. This hatred of the Sarafan Lord seemed personal and at the same time shared among the Coven.

"Yes. He's War Crest's great great great great…great grandson, right?" Zekiel's enthusiasm had returned upon having something to lend to the conversation. He'd caught the ancient hylden's unamused stare three greats in. "Sorry." He said after stifling a giggle. The boy then tried to look very serious. "It's not funny, his descendants disowned him." A'Jik'Kan swatted Zeke's direction dismissively.

"Alj'Gik, Kain, Alj'Gik-!" The Seer seemed to think he knew what she was talking about, snapping her fingers to jog her recollection. "I just told you to- The Mass!"

"Ah." Was all Kain replied with. Thinking back he realized he indeed had no idea what the Mass had been. All he knew was the hylden planned to somehow use a large organism to wipe out all opposing beings in Nosgoth and, more importantly, how to kill it. That was all he cared about at the time. 'Move quickly, accomplish much' was an accurate summation on his mentality at over 1000 years younger.

"I can tell _you_ with certainty that both of those things will be taken care of." Kain stated. Vorador gave him an inquisitive glance.

"Yes, I'm sure they will." The Seer snapped at them. "But if Ilj'On is slain and the only hylden capable of reporting what transpired in Nosgoth perish with the sealing of the portal the loudest voice left in the Demon Realm will be Isk, Ilj'On's father. Ilj'On did not incite this invasion on his own. He will be martyred for his cause."

Alj'Pak came forward and put a hand at the Seer's shoulder speaking in a quiet rasp. "There will be unrest in the Banished. There will be an inquisition. The radicals will get rid of anyone that disagrees. And the demons! The demons will not be pleased that we remain in their realm when they had been promised we were leaving!" The longer she spoke the faster her words came until she was all but squeaking.

"Only the most violent and determined will be left to inevitably claw their way back into Nosgoth. It would only be a matter of time." Jik'Lex said calmly after Alj'Pak's voice became an anxious whistle.

Kain furrowed his considerable brow. Disturbing a long settled accomplishment Kain remembered exactly what the Sarafan Lord said before he'd run the hylden through with the SoulReaver. _The war between their kind would never end. They would be back_. It was a threat Kain had never afforded much substance. One makes many threats upon defeat. Now he wished he could dismiss it as the ego of a dying warlord. Even so he was having a hard time justifying the thought of helping an entire species that directly opposed him at every turn. The thought would have been dashed immediately 500 years ago. Kain subconsciously rested his talons at his chest where there was once a hollow gaping wound.

"And this should be our concern?" Kain asked cocking his head in inquiry. He waited for an answer with an unreadable expression.

Jik'Lex sputtered a few words of disbelief. The prophesied Scion of Balance, in accordance with their luck, was a selfish, aloof vampire. The Seer held a hand on to the spectacled hylden. He calmed with no short amount of resentment. The Seer affixed Kain with a knowing smile.

"You're here, are you not?" She said with an air of confidence.

"Sorry, did you have some other pressing matters to attend to? Demolishing the timeline? Farmer's market, perhaps?" Raziel quipped. He was still perched on the ground beside the ancient hylden. Raziel had been so quiet Kain almost forgot he was there and almost forgot he was again corporeal. Kain sneered his direction, fangs making an appearance.

"Boy-"

"Oh this one has words!" The Seer tittered over Kain's inevitable threat. "I like him. What is your name, una mică?" She turned to the wraith. Her amused expression suddenly faltered as if she wasn't sure what she was looking at. She seemed puzzled as he stood and offered her a curt bow at the waist.

"I am Raziel." His own name left his mouth softly yet subtly strained. He couldn't remember the last time anyone had bothered to ask him what his name was.

The ancient hylden spoke from behind him, frantically waving a hand. Although he spoke hylden Raziel glanced from him back to the Seer.

"Oh, yes I am the champion, I think. Were you aware the vampires had a directly opposing champion? Not that it matters, as I'm apparently somehow representative of both. Further overshadowed under the heavy title of SoulReaver, I suppose." Raziel very casually spoke several sentences that brought the Coven present to a collective halt.

"Both? What do you mean you are both?" Vorador barked, sitting up at attention.

"You can be both?" Jik'Lex mumbled in the elder vampire's wake.

"I was just as surprised, I assure you." Raziel said bowing his head to Vorador, knowing full well his feelings on the matter.

The Seer made a loud hissing sound and snapped her fingers. The space quieted. "Thank you. The SoulReaver, cel mic? Of this I know."

"This one?" Zekiel pointed to the fearsome sword in Kain's claws. "Because that's definitely it."

"Yes that is the Reaver which _I_ made at the behest of my sire. Why it has become a reverent icon to all of Nosgoth is well beyond my forge." Vorador drawled. He sounded somewhat annoyed by the fact as if all of this prophecy was complicating a perfectly good sword.

"Do you mean to say the champions of both hylden and vampire are not strictly metaphorical? That they are the same? And that the vampire's Reaver is the same as Akan-J'ral, the SoulReaver?" Jik'Lex asked sounding now as incredulous as Vorador. He squinted through his round frames at this vampire Raziel for the first time. He certainly looked like a vampire. And yet. Those fiercely glowing eyes of his, more akin to those of hylden, were a bright all-consuming white. It was like looking into the abyss as it looked at you in return.

"Akan-J'ral…" Raziel mused, rolling the word off his tongue naturally as he considered it. "This?" He then lifted his right arm to let an ethereal light twist and wind upward until it was again the twin of its physical self. Verdant motes wisped from an intense glowing white not unlike his eyes.

Gasps rippled through the Coven. Jik'Lex inhaled so sharp he snorted violently. Similarly A'Jik'Kan started in on a coughing fit. Raziel turned to the ancient hylden without thought and put his left hand at his chest to stay his rattling ribcage. Perhaps he found himself relating to the fallen skeletal warrior.

"What is that!?" Zekiel's eyes were wide and sparkling, reflecting the ghostly light of the wraith blade.

"Complicated, is what it is." Raziel replied as A'Jik'Kan's wheezing subsided.


	9. Qualifications

[Author's note like it's 2008 & shit: Thank you for your reviews & praise! I cry. Yes, the Seer speaks Romanian.]

Chapter 8:  
Qualifications

The Seer was as momentarily mesmerized by the ghostly blade as everyone else. When she turned her attention back to its wielder something about Raziel shimmered in her vision. She couldn't quite pin it down. It was as if there was a shroud of water shifting around him. He had been quiet until now. She had assumed him a wayward vampire in a passing glance. The presence of power in the area was attributed to Kain but as Raziel presented the SoulReaver a complementary duality became obvious to her.

"What are you, cel mic?" she asked him with a sincere wonderment. She knew at the least she was not looking at a mere vampire.

"The short version, if you please." Vorador followed her question, gaining a quiet scoff from Kain beside him. Raziel bowed his head in acknowledgement to the elder vampire. He pressed his claws together in a steeple. The ethereal blade seemed to retreat to lazy coils of energy winding along his arm.

"Short, then. Well… through a series of events orchestrated by several arrogant individuals trying to outwit one another with the fabric of time I have become a wraith wielding a weaponized wraith."

While everyone let Raziel's succinct summation sink in Vorador hummed in thought. "That is your doing then is it?" He asked of Kain with no small amount of judgement as he motioned to the wraith. "Aye." Kain admitted with the finality of stating a fact that he did not plan to expand on. Not in the moment and certainly not if it wasn't relevant.

"What's done is done…but what is it that you will do? If you don't mind my asking, how far has your plan come along exactly?" Raziel asked the witch.

"And what business is that of yours?" The Seer opened her mouth to reply but Kain spoke instead. He affixed the wraith with a steely glare.

Raziel folded his arms over his chest not so dissimilar to his sire's attitude. "I would like to know how the plight of the hylden fit into this Wheel." He said. There was an attempt to keep the defense from his voice.

"Who says it fits at all, Raziel." Kain replied dismissively.

"Everyone may imply that it does not. But that is just the same as passing judgement upon all vampires having only known what humans know. How the hylden feel and react matters: the Wheel will use it against Nosgoth just as it has everything else. What's your business is now my business and by extension what's my business is yours. Indulge me."

There was a brief tension before Kain sat back in his spot and released Raziel from his halting glare. Far from being intimidated as he may have been fifteen hundred years ago Raziel maintained his posture. He knew Kain would fight tooth and nail against putting any level of trust in anything even in the best of circumstances. Subconscious or not such a social schism was no doubt the fallout of the Circle of Nine's betrayal and perhaps no small part by the accompanying corruption. The latter now cleansed perhaps it would allow him some reprieve. The thought crossed Raziel's mind as Kain waved a hand his direction.

"Very well." Kain resigned followed by, "Mind your tone."

"Noted." Raziel allowed a small smile to himself.

"That is quite an altruistic take, cel mic. What drives you to know the plight of your enemies?" The Seer leaned forward with a playful smirk chasing her question.

"Yes well…your enemies are who you make them. I have now been on every conceivable side of vigorous conflict in Nosgoth's history. I'm in a unique position that affords me to be objective and objective I shall be." Raziel affirmed thoughtfully.

"Oho he's a good one. He's good, Kain, where did you find this one?" The Seer brought a waving hand to her breastbone once more before waving it at Kain. Kain said nothing for a moment. He noted to himself that 400 years trapped in a sword did nothing to dampen Raziel's ever-present sense of righteousness. In this instance he supposed he couldn't fault the boy. In light of true enemy, the self-serving Wheel of Fate, even ancient blood feuds and genocidal curses seemed paltry.

"Have you been able to conjure any ill-advised portals, then?" Kain asked her, cynicism dripping from his rich voice.

"Well we did manage to open one…but doing so took and generated so much energy Jik'Lex and I were downed for months. Not to mention it caught the immediate attention of a demon or two." The Seer elaborated despite Kain's attitude.

"A demon snapped its jaws through the tear and almost ate my face. It was exciting." Zekiel chirped. Vorador frowned down at the winged boy out of both disapproval and concern.

"You may want to redouble your efforts in that case. You have what may be less than a fortnight before the gateway is destroyed." Kain suggested if not rather condescendingly. The witch heaved a harried sigh in response.

"Aye we wouldn't even have gotten that far if Zekiel wasn't being hounded by some spirit from the other side." The confident demeanor the Seer held seemed to flake. Desperation peeked out from beneath it.

"I don't know why. I'm an illusionist, no medium." Zeke said a tad more shyly than he had been speaking. He idly smoothed out his vestments and folded his hands in his lap.

"When you say the other side you mean- ?" Raziel spoke with a keen interest.

"From the Demon Realm, cel mic! We would not pursue such a reckless line of action had we no reason. This spirit has to be incredibly powerful to pull at Zekiel's senses through an entirely different dimension." The Seer expressed with another dramatic wave of her hand.

"You're sure this spirit has aligned intentions?" Raziel asked, pressing his lips thin. He had tried not to sound condescending. The Coven couldn't possibly know all he knew.

"It's been very insistent about creating a portal. Portal magic is ancient vampire sorcery, something the hylden aren't able to replicate naturally." Zekiel divulged, perhaps not realizing the poorer he was making a case for this mysterious spirit. Raziel could not be sure how similar this timeline was (or what timeline this was). For the time being he did not want to assume the particulars of the Circle of Nine's echoed and ill-fated dabbling in dimensions had been common knowledge.

"It draws me only to the focal fonts. The- uh." Zeke stumbled over his next sentence unsure if the Scion's party knew what the fonts were. Raziel's alerted posture signaled that he certainly did.

"The elemental fonts?" The wraith's suspicious demeanor softened. The presence of the elements changed things. When met with an affirmative nod from the boy Raziel inquired further. "Have you tried to summon it?" Kain and Vorador cast identical looks his way at the very sudden change in tone. Jik'Lex stepped up beside the wraith turning the same book over and over in his hands.

"We hesitate." His cautious voice came from the back of his throat where most of his syllables were shaped. "We cannot utilize the fonts for energy as they were rumored to do. Your suspicion is well founded and not alone. We have no way of controlling the situation should the spirit prove maniacal."

Raziel considered the advisor's words. "I see." He said, tapping his claws at the back of his hand. "What if I told you I you I can do both of those things?"

Jik'Lex looked dumbfounded under the wraith's somewhat bemused gaze. Before he could gather any full words Zekiel had all but leapt from his seat to the other side of Raziel.

"You would help us?" Zeke asked full of hope. "I could at the least show you to the fonts! Right, Lady Ak'Ton?" The small ancient turned to the Seer for approval, his cloak whirling about his shoulders.

"Find out what you can, my child. But be cautious." The witch smiled but expressed her last statement with a stern seriousness.

"Lady Ak'Ton you are sure about this?" Jik'Lex asked as Zekiel wormed his way and him to pluck a large tome from a stack of books. Jik'Lex brought his slender claws to his teeth anxiously. He was still very nervous of these strange newcomers prophesied or not. Zeke hefted the book in his arms, a feat beyond any ordinary child his apparent age.

"Are you qualified for that, Zekiel?" Vorador drawled still seated.

"Anyone can make a summoning circle, Uncle Vorador." Zeke stated in a matter-of-fact tone you might hear from a child making explanations. Vorador was not amused.

The ancient hylden tapped one of the chitinous crescents jutting from Jik'Lex's back, the vestigial remnants of wings. A'Jik'Kan uttered presumably reassuring words to his advisor and apprentice.

"See, War Crest said it's alright!" Zeke chirped as he began to scuttle away. "Come, champion! I can show you the central fonts."

"I've had quite enough hellish rituals for the night." Vorador said in response to the stunted ancient vampire. Kain said nothing. Raziel had subdued a smile, both he and Kain having a roster of days competing for the most bizarre.

"Jik'Lex and I will entertain our vampire guests with no shortage of things to talk about." The Seer said with a nod.

"Yes milady…" Jik'Lex hesitantly agreed. He shared a look with Alj'Pak whom had again placed herself on the fringes of conversation. Alj'Pak nodded and made to follow Zekiel. She tugged Jacques' ragged sleeve as she passed him and he too followed.

Raziel took a careful step but paused. He turned and motioned to Ariel. She looked almost aggrieved at the sudden attention but drifted after him. Alj'Pak and Jacques flanked them as the tailed an ecstatic Zekiel back across the open hall. The night sky above them was only just beginning to fade with the edges of dawn.

"Your specter in company is coming with? Hello ma'am!" Zekiel chimed as he shuffled onward. He waved in greeting over his thin shoulder seemingly unfazed.

"Given the choice two are certainly better than one if you need a qualified eye. I'd say we're quite qualified." Raziel mused.


	10. Another Guest

Chapter 9:  
Another Guest

Raziel was long used to flowing with any situation that he found himself embroiled in for better or what was usually worse. Staying in the moment was the best defense he had against the ever present melancholia he wore like a heaver winter cloak. He was grateful for the busy circumstances in the hours since his sudden exorcism. Especially so, as with it came a number of revelations capable of grinding him to a complete emotional stop. Still among all this new information to focus on he found himself fixated on the sleek black feathers of the stunted ancient vampire he was following.

Zekiel was so much smaller than Janos Audron, the man he thought was the last of his kind, so much younger. It was painful to think about what befell Janos and how much of it was directly caused by him. It was painful to speculate how hard, how unfair, Zekiel's life must be to have been only a child when the blood curse struck. These thoughts flit to and fro Raziel's mind as he followed along, keeping him from acknowledging wings that now sat loosely folded at his own shoulder blades. He just didn't have the mental fortitude.

At the other end of the great hall he had come out of his muddled head when they began to descend a lazily spiraling staircase. It was narrow but much like the previous hall it opened up into a cavernous room just beyond a large gate. The stairs ended at these tall gilded bars. A few of the spokes looed to have been cut out with some kind of equipment which lay scattered nearby.

"We couldn't open it so Alj'Pak had been cutting a way through with her trusty torch." Jacques said as the group approached it. Raziel had blinked and turned his head to the young Voradorim. Jacques smiled and nodded in return. He lifted his left arm and motioned again to the iron shackle at his wrist. A single remaining chain link jingled an ironically pleasant note with the movement. "She offered to cut this off too. Not that I don't trust her with my life but you know I feel like I'm a might bit too flammable to risk it." Alj'Pak cast her gaze down at the stairs sheepishly. Zekiel had giggled in front of them.

Raziel had smiled as well. He appreciated such seemingly banal idle chit-chat. He appreciated not being alone. He looked onward at this looming gate. It was large but of identical make to the dozens of gates he'd come across in ancient vampire ruins. Indeed looking up, like many of those doorways, its height was adorned with what he knew to be a latch. It was small and round and rather decorative. If one wasn't looking for it he could see where it would be easy to miss.

Zeke had already slipped through the hole in the gate. His diminutive frame did not have to do as much careful squeezing as others certainly would have. Raziel waited until the child was standing on the other side, ruffling downy feathers, to raise his arm. Those behind him halted. The visible energy that had been quietly flickering on and off of his right shoulder then shot forward in almost an instant, striking the latch. A dull click sounded and the gate slowly swung inward, hinges groaning in protest.

"What-!" Jacques and Zekiel simultaneously expressed their surprise. Alj'Pak looked only slightly defeated as they stepped over the threshold. "Only our guardians and priests could open those back at the citadel." Zeke chimed in curious wonderment.

Raziel took in the large circular chamber they now stood in while the boy flipped intently through the tome he had borrowed. _Back at the citadel_ Zekiel had said. This chamber was very similar to the central dais in the vampire citadel. His gaze went from ceremonial font to font that dotted the edges of the room. He then looked upwards. This was also somewhat of a tower structure. Multiple large open archways denoted different levels of access. At the very top was a balcony open to the mountain air.

"This is beautiful…" Ariel was heard to murmur. A glance over his shoulder found Ariel close behind him also gazing upwards. He was reminded that she was native to this timeline. It was a future incarnation of Ariel that had been drawn to the spirit forge in the vampire citadel and purified the Reaver. He briefly wondered how much of Nosgoth she had gotten to experience before being trapped at the Pillars for centuries.

"How much do you know about this spirit?" Raziel asked when he turned back. Zekiel had taken a bit of charcoal from nearby wall braziers. At the question he stood from trying to very carefully draw a circle on the smooth stone floor.

"Well. Its intent doesn't feel negative. Just frantic. Almost afraid. That makes me think it needs help…" The child spoke with measured confidence as if unsure he were doing the right thing. Zekiel dusted his talons off on his well-worn slacks. "Although… I admit something about it puts me on edge."

"That's alright. It's not often my soul devouring nature is tactically useful rather than utterly horrible." Nor was it often the mention of his soul devouring nature reassuring rather than terrifying but Raziel's quiet voice and apologetic smile made Zekiel a tad more faithful in the situation. Raziel reached down to rest a hand on Zekiel's shoulder. In the back of his mind it struck him how small Zeke really was. The concept of children was something very foreign to Empire era vampires so especially removed from humanity. Raziel tamped down whatever complicated emotions bubbled up at the thought.

He focused on the present energy. The now comforting presence of the elements was constant in the tower hidden in a mountain. On top of this Zekiel held a presence all his own. It was like being surrounded by damp earth. Something about it felt like home even if Raziel's definition of home was suspended in the ether.

Raziel had never intentionally summoned anything before. That would imply he knew what he was doing- a rare occurrence. In this instance he had come to assume it may be intuitive. Between him and his weaponized twin one of them was bound to pick up something. Indeed they did. What felt like a thread cantilevered outward from Zekiel not unlike the sensation he had felt when the Reaver freed Ariel from her destined post.

Without a second though, a trait that continuously landed him in trouble, Raziel reached out to pull at this thread. At his touch energy blazed down his arm in an instant illuminating an invisible path. It seemed almost comically simple that Raziel could reel in a spectral string to bring forth whosoever may be on the other end. What complicated things was convincing the Wraith Reaver that this effort was not a meal for him. He wasn't pleased to hear it. Raziel was bracing through a nauseating dip in his own energy when Ariel cried out in surprise. The passing instant borrowed from her as well, a clean white light. Ariel had panicked and retreated to the spectral realm.

Zekiel blinked owlishly. All of that shuffling of energy happened in a second's time and left the air feeling charged. "Did it work?" Zeke wondered aloud, idly placing his small talons at his now unencumbered chest. Raziel was ready to admit the boy's guess was as good as his when Ariel reappeared. She came into view like a ship gliding in from the mist and she did not look happy. It seemed she wore anger just as naturally as she wore sorrow. Wordlessly she drifted to stope behind Raziel. With her arms crossed and remaining brow furrowed she glared just ahead as if waiting.

Raziel remembered to open his mouth to speak but got no words out before a loud cracking sounded. The sound was amplified in the cylindrical chamber as was an accompanying sulfurous smell. A pillar of ghastly fire split the space before them. As it dissipated back into nothingness a semi-transparent figure stepped through. Zekiel gave a sharp gasp and seized Raziel's arm to hide behind it.

There in dark robes humbled by the expanse of white stone stood the spirit of the late Guardian of Death Mortanius. Though his breastplate of bone remained the death mask he wore was gone. In its place his tired angular features were drawn together in a grieving, pained expression.

The residual energy of another summoning lent to the palpable tension in the following pause. It had been Mortanius that murdered Ariel all those centuries ago and marked the corruption of the Pillars of Nosgoth. It had also been Mortanius whom resurrected Kain as a vampire, thus unleashing him upon his fellow guardians. Apart from Kain, Raziel was perhaps the only one to know those two conflicting acts were carried out by different entities.

"Hail, Lord Mortanius. Alone this day, are you?" Raziel called from the edge of the chamber's circular center. He squared his shoulders for those taking refuge behind him as Mortanius took a tentative step forward. The guardian looked to Raziel with slight puzzlement, perhaps wondering who this was. Raziel gave a curt half-bow then brought an arm up to tap his temple with a claw. "Alone?"

Mortanius reached up to his own temples. His wide eyes were pale and glassy with eons of mysticism but that was all. No ominous green glow made an appearance. Indescribably relieved, the necromancer let his fingers trail down his own face as if to reacquaint them before clutching his hands to his chest.

"Yes, alone…I- " Mortanius began to speak but caught sight of Zekiel. The boy looked frightened despite his yars and shrank against Raziel's side. "It's you. The fledgling. You are the last one…?" Mortanius' voice caught between disbelief and shame. Raziel got the sense that out of all the actions Mortanius regretted they were now largely represented by those that stood before him. Knowing how easy it was to be consumed by one's own shame the wraith redirected the tension.

"He is. Care to share why it is you so frantically contacted him?' he asked. Zeke clutched Raziel's talons with his own but stood a little taller. Jacques and Alj'Pak had come up behind them now. Moranius paused. Clearly circumstances here were different than whatever he had expected. There was a shared sense of desperation then as he took in this incredibly bizarre ensemble of characters.

"Very well…"


	11. The Necromancer's Tidings

Chapter 10:  
The Necromancer's Tidings

With the coming dawn the Seer had led the vampires to a more enclosed space. Vorador was hesitant to accept Jik'Lex's offer to scry the Cabal but was bribed into security with a comfortable seat and a goblet of blood. Neither of the vampires bothered to complain about the source being livestock. Vorador had fallen far from his historically significant hedonism. Now, living in a state of oppression and paranoia, he took what he could get where he could get it. Kain now likewise allotted energy much more efficiently than the young vampire of this era. He had found there is little worth complaining about.

The Cabal was nearly startled to death and back when hylden glyphs appeared in the midst of their hideout nestled in the seedy depths of Miridian. Vorador's generals were visually relieved, albeit confused, to see their patron up and well. Umah reported the fledgling Kain having gallivanted off into the heart of the hylden city at the behest of the Seer's advice in the canyons. Vorador expressed his doubt as the line of communication closed.

"If you weren't sitting here I would have a hard time believing you could make it another century." He casually remarked to the much more imposing elder Kain beside him.

"Your vote of confidence is appreciated, old one. I assure you he will be fine. Best to stay out of his way." Kain replied

"You needn't tell me twice." The eldest scoffed. The Seer was spared sitting through more of the vampire's attitudes when there was a knock at the doorframe that lead out to the hall.

"Come, come." The witch called even as small hands grabbed at the heavy curtain affixed to the jamb. Zekiel appeared looking much less enthusiastic than when he had departed. He shuffled across the dusty marble floor directly toward Vorador. The child clambered into the same seat, coming to perch upon the arm of the chair wrought in similar stone. Ariel appeared without warning behind the vampires in a dampened mood as well. They were well used to keeping company of a specter by now and scarcely reacted.

"Went that well, did it?" Vorador drawled. He received no answer. Raziel pushed aside the curtain with a raised forearm wearing a heightened pause on his face. The chamber may have been a small dining room. Kain and Vorador sat across from the Seer at an original long table centuries past robbed of any runners or cutlery. That would have meant this temple predated the vampiric curse. A few mismatched braziers provided a soft light in the stead of the rising sun, blocked off from the opposite yawning balconies with a number of scavenged rugs and tapestries. Raziel took an unnecessary breath as if to steady himself. He looked to Vorador.

"Let me preface this with advice to keep your weapons sheathed as he's already dead." Raziel announced with an air of caution. He managed to keep from wringing his claws but the wings at his shoulders fluttered amongst themselves nervously.

"So are you but that wouldn't stop me from taking a swing." Vorador replied. This garnered a concerned glance from the wraith but Vorador was no longer looking at him. He stood to his full height with Zekiel clutching at his crushed velvet tunic. All sloth and apathy drained from his face. It was replaced with an intense predatory focus. His lips curled back in what seemed to be slow motion.

Mortanius had phased through the curtain that was still subtly rustling in Raziel's wake. The wraith had warned him. He was told there were more hylden. He was told very specifically that the vampire Vorador was in attendance. Raziel had gone on to say more, about cooperation or something, but Mortanius wasn't listening. H had tried to steel himself. He knew better now but there was hardly a more heated opposition than the Circle versus Vorador whom had come to represent everything humans were conditioned to hat so fiercely about vampires. The volume of bad blood between them could drown a village.

"Vorador…" Mortanius managed to say through a scowl that pressed his lips thin.

"Mortanius." Vorador snapped in reply, his voice filling the room. "You always were transparent." He hissed as he sank back into his seat, maintaining a piercing glare. Mortanius clenched his fists but said nothing. Raziel had gently put a hand at his arm as if to stay him. The old vampire's jab stung sharply and it wasn't even directed at him. The silence that followed was heavy.

"And where did you come from?" Kain broke it with what was more of a demand then a question. Mortanius inclined his head to the other vampire. He blinked a few times to gather his thoughts. Raziel remained beside him. Many important figures in Nosgoth's history were now corralled into an ancient dining nook and Raziel knew none of them to be particularly forthcoming with information. Airing out all of said information was going to require patience. While this was infamously lacked by several present Raziel found his patience somewhat renewed. Perhaps after 400 years imprisoned in isolation nothing less than that seemed to be an inconvenience.

"I was held fast in the Demon Realm…" Mortanius voiced coyly, indeed trying to judge if he was to divulge information to such a motley crew.

"Yes I imagine you were. And why are you here now?" Kain asked in the same fashion as before. Mortanius had paused. No one had addressed him so brusquely in a very long time, dead or otherwise. A smile threatened the corner of Kain's mouth as he could read as much on the guardian's face. It occurred to Kain he had in fact never seen the guardian's face before. Mortanius' conviction wavered under such intense scrutiny. Raziel tapped Mortanius' arm again in an attempt to be reassuring.

"It's very important." The wraith quietly insisted. At this Mortanius nodded with resolved.

"To warn you." He said solemnly. Kain's expression did not change. Vorador scoffed beside him. Necromancer's could never bring good news. The Seer's eyes were wide with anticipation or fear or both.

"The Demon Realm. It's completely separate from Nosgoth save for few places where they meet. There is a fanatic among the hylden remaining. Isk it is called. It is rallying the others seeking a more stable way into our realm. More stable than the Hylden Lord's precarious portal. They're using the spectral realm.

"They have access to the spectral realm?" Raziel asked, quelling an inquisitive panic.

The company had grown quiet. Kain was not leaned forward, his elbows propped upon the dusty marble. The Seer's hand was to her face and her fingertips rested upon her lips.

"The spectral realm spans across both dimensions. Something is giving the hylden complete access. This was not something they did on their own. A force that powerful is capable of anything. I don't know how I would have overlooked it before…" Mortanius trailed off. His brows knit together in frustration. As the Guardian of Death he had always had access to the spectral realm. The prospect of not knowing such a large entity manipulated the veil of the dead so readily despite all his years of living was a distressing one to face. Kain and Raziel exchanged a solemn look.

"That is no fault of yours Mortanius. If it doesn't want you to know it you will not." Raziel said after a moment. "But fanatic zealots? Those we have experience in stopping, don't we?" The wraith continued, not keen on plunging into the life altering lecture on the Wheel of Fate just yet.

"Aye I suppose we do." Kain replied thoughtfully.

"You're speaking of going _into_ the Demon Realm?" The guardian balked.

"If the situation is so dire we cannot afford to sit around and wait for them to show up somewhere. Unless you have a better plan." Raziel said with an inclination of his head. Mortanius frowned but had nothing to offer.

"Proactive though it is it sounds much like suicide." He said instead.

Raziel smiled and nodded.

"Good thing we're already dead."


End file.
